Open Access

Mandates

In the research community, a "mandate" refers to guidelines or requirements set by a governing body, funding agency, or other organization stipulating how research should be conducted, disseminated, or made accessible. These mandates are designed to ensure that research practices align with goals such as ethical standards, transparency, and public accessibility.

Types of Mandates
There are different types of mandates, each with its specific focus and requirements:

• Funder Mandates: These are issued by funders of the research, dictating requirements that researchers must follow as a condition of receiving funding.
• Data Sharing Mandates: These focus on the sharing of research data.
• Public Access and Open Access Mandates: These dictate how and where research outputs should be made accessible to the public.
• Ethical Mandates: These relate to the ethical conduct of research, like participant consent and data privacy.

Public Access

When referring to scholarly research, public access refers to the practice of making scholarly works, such as journal articles and datasets, freely available to the public. This approach contrasts the traditional scholarly publishing model, where access to research is restricted to subscribers or paid viewers of scholarly journals.

Public Access vs. Open Access

Public Access and Open Access are closely related, but they have different accessibility and reuse rights. Typically:

• Public Access - The public can read or download works without a subscription or payment. However, the rights to reuse or distribute the content are typically limited. 
• Open Access - The public can read or download works without a subscription or payment but is also typically permitted to reuse, redistribute, and adapt the work.

A public access mandate typically requires research be made available for free to the public, but it does not necessary require the public to be able to freely reuse the work.

An open access mandate typically goes a step further, requiring that research be freely accessible to the public and allowing the public to reuse or redistribute, generally under certain conditions.

While both mandates make research free to access, open access mandates allow more freedom in how that research can be used.

Examples of Public Access Mandates

NIH Public Access Policy: This policy mandates that all research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) must be submitted to the PubMed Central database and made publicly accessible no later than 12 months after publication. The reuse and redistribution rights vary from publication to publication. 

Tri-Agency Policy on Publications: This policy mandates that all peer-reviewed journal publications arising from NSERC, SSHRC, or CIHR-funded research be made publicly accessible within 12 months of publication. Similar to the NIH policy, this mandate focuses on public access to the research rather than reuse rights.

Examples of Open Access Mandates

Wellcome Trust's Open Access Policy: This policy mandates that all research outputs funded by them must be made available open access. The Trust requires that the outputs be deposited in PubMed Central or Europe PubMed Central, with a Creative Commons license allowing for reuse and redistribution.

Plan S: This policy, created by cOAlition S, a group of national research agencies and funders from several European countries, mandates that from 2021, publications resulting from research funded by public grants must be published in open access journals or platforms and the articles must be made immediately available with a license that permits unrestricted reuse, such as a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).

Funder Mandates

Funder Mandates are mandates issued by the governing body, funding agency, or other organization, that is funding a research project. These mandates usually have specific requirements that researchers must follow in order to receive funding. These mandates are usually public or open access mandates, dictating how research outputs should be shared.

Examples of Funder Mandates

NIH Public Access Policy: This policy mandates that all research funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) must be submitted to the PubMed Central database and made publicly accessible no later than 12 months after publication.

National Science Foundation (NSF) Public Access Policy: The NSF requires that all published research articles and accompanying data funded by the NSF be made available in a designated public access repository.

European Research Council (ERC) Open Access Guidelines: The ERC mandates open access to all peer-reviewed publications of ERC-funded research.

Complying with Mandates
Funding agencies are increasingly focused on maximizing the impact and accessibility of the research they sponsor. This often involves mandates for making research and its supporting data freely available to the public. Here are some actions researchers can follow to ensure they understand and comply with these mandates:

Check Requirements

• Review Funder Policies: When applying for grants, carefully review the access requirements of the funding agency
• Use Helpful Tools: Employ tools like Sherpa Juliet and ROARMAP to find and understand funding requirements

Select Repositories

• Researchers should choose a repository that complies with funders requirements and fits the research:
  • Funder-Specific Repositories: Some funders may designate specific repositories for sharing research, like PubMed Central for NIH-funded research
  • IRs and Subject Repositories: Some funders may allow researchers to chose a repository, like the institutional repository UDSpace or a discipline specific repository like ArXiv
  • Platform Criteria: A repository usually should offer public access, long-term storage, and persistent URLs to comply with funder requirements.

Comply with Policies

• Understand Agreements: It is important to carefully read the terms of publishing contracts and copyright transfer agreements to understand how they align with funder mandates. Researchers can use tools like Sherpa Romeo to help understand standard publisher/journal polices, but the publishing contract or copyright transfer agreement has the most accurate and detailed information specific to each case
• Retain Rights: Researchers should ensure that any agreement that they sign allows compliance with their funder's public access policy, such as allowing the author to deposit their work in an open repository
• Library Consultations: Researchers can advantage of booking a consultations on copyright transfer agreements, open access, and data management to help navigate compliance issues

Data Sharing Mandates

• Specific Requirements: Data sharing mandates often specify how the data supporting research should be made publicly accessible, including requirements for specific repositories, durations, and formats
• Library Support:  Researchers can utilize the Research Data Management Research Guide or book a consultation with the Research Data Steering Group for assistance with data management planning and compliance